Centre for Excellence in Language Teaching: 2023/24 round-up

It has been another exciting academic year for the Centre for Excellence in Language Teaching (CELT). It is our mission to promote research and scholarship as well as innovative practice in language teaching and learning at the University of Leeds and beyond. We frequently bring together academics and students to exchange ideas and discuss their work. The regular CELT scholarship lunches are among our core activities. We also organise and support conferences, public talks and networks; we promote news about projects, publications and other achievements, and we host a blog and an open-access academic journal The Language Scholar. In this post, we look back at some highlights from the academic year 2023/24.

Scholarship Lunches

The CELT scholarship lunches are informal lunch meetings where colleagues and students have the opportunity to share updates on their work and teaching/scholarship/research projects, give short work-in-progress papers, get feedback on new ideas, celebrate their achievements, or discuss any reflections or concerns in a friendly and supportive environment. In 2023/24, we were delighted that the following colleagues have contributed presentations or chaired discussions at one of the CELT scholarship lunches:

• Isabel Molina Vidal, Lecturer in Spanish: The use of text-based online chat to promote self-repair of recurrent grammar errors in Spanish when speaking
• Karima Gaci, Lecturer in French: An approach to teaching past participle agreements of pronominal verbs in French differently
• Cuie Xu, Lecturer in Korean: Factors Influencing Korean Language Teaching Practices
• Alba del Pozo García, Lecturer in Spanish Language: Students' perspectives and expectations about language and content
• Olive Nabukeera, Lecturer in English (EAP Teaching & Scholarship): Race and teacher identity in English for Academic Purposes
• Milada Walková, Lecturer in English for Academic Purposes: Grammar teaching in an academic context
• Ayako Yoshino, Lecturer in Japanese, and Cuie Xu, Lecturer in Korean: Post-pandemic language study skills of Japanese/Korean students
• Melissa Scalabrin, Skills Enhancement Fellow in the School of Law: Motivations of monolingual L1 English students to study a language via University Wide Language Programmes

Read some testimonials by colleagues who contributed to one of our CELT scholarship lunches during the academic year 2023/24: what did they talk about and how did they find the experience of contributing to a CELT scholarship lunch?

Conferences, symposia and talks

CELT regularly organises or supports the organisation and promotion of events related to language teaching and learning. This includes internal CPD workshops and practice-sharing events as well as national and international conferences and public talks.

We were very pleased to host two international symposia in the summer of 2023:

• Language education in the (post-)digital era - lessons learnt from the pandemic, a symposium we hosted with support from the University Council for Languages (UCFL)
• Symposium: Questioning Language Teaching Orthodoxy in Higher Education, an international conference funded by the Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence (LITE)

We have also supported language-specific events, such as a symposium on "Cultural and linguistic diversity in German Language Teaching", put on in collaboration with the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland (AGS).

In January 2024, we were delighted to host a public talk "Cold spots in language degree provision in England: findings and actions" by Becky Muradás-Taylor, Professor of Languages and Linguistics in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies.

Find out more about all past and future events on our events page, or take a look at our collection of recordings and resources from past events.

Networks

CELT is proud to have supported the formation of a number of regional and national networks that bring together researchers and practitioners. In 2023/24, the list of newly founded networks includes:

• The Yorkshire Language Teaching Research & Scholarship Network, co-founded by Judith Eberharter.
• The Northern Second Language Acquisition Roundtable, co-founded by Clare Wright
• A new special interest group "Pedagogical approaches to language variation" for the Association of University Language Communities in the UK and Ireland (AULC), founded by Rasha Soliman and Sascha Stollhans

Projects, news, publications, blog and The Language Scholar

CELT has a dedicated webpage showcasing research and scholarship projects that Leeds colleagues are involved in. We also promote colleagues' news and achievements, including publications, presentations and funding successes. Our blog invites contributions from staff and students, who often report on conferences and other activities, or share their thoughts on hot debates in the field.

This year's new blog posts include:

• "How the Language Zone contributes to creating a sense of belonging in the Language Centre"
• "AULC 2023 conference reflections: Languages for All in HE: Inclusion, Diversity, and Sustainability"
• "The case for grammar teaching in EAP"

The Language Scholar, our open-access journal, published its 12th issue in 2023/24, and the editors are currently preparing an exciting new special issue on "Developing Contexts of Scholarship", to be expected in the summer - watch this space!

Support for students

CELT is keen to support students with an interest in language teaching and learning. In the past, we were delighted to welcome undergraduate students to our scholarship lunches, who shared their fascinating final-year projects on a topic related to language education with us. Undergraduate and postgraduate students are warmly invited to present their work at a CELT scholarship lunch, let us know about their news, and contribute to our blog. Staff and students alike: please do get in touch if you have anything you would like to share!